Reforming Kemal: the nation's reasonable compromise on religion and politics.

IN his charming tourist history of modern Turkey, A Fez of the Heart, Jeremy Seal tells of visiting a small provincial museum in which pictures of a historic visit to the town by Kemal Ataturk 60 years before were proudly on display. What immediately struck him about the photographs was the astonishing variety of headgear that Ataturk had worn that one short day. One Western hat after another--fedora, trilby, homburg--was perched on the great man's head as he walked about the town to the wonderment of his subjects. Yet Ataturk was no male model, but a tough, hard-drinking soldier and Man of Destiny. So what was he up to?

He was, of course, giving the townspeople a beginner's course in Westernization. Kemal Ataturk created the modern Turkish Republic from out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. He modeled his creation on the latest European fashions in statecraft--the new Turkey was to be democratic, nationalist, progressive, and, above all, secular. But since the population of his new Republic was 98 percent Muslim, he had to effect a cultural revolution to ensure its secularism. He decided to expel Islam from the public sphere and to place religious observance under the control of a Ministry of Religious Affairs.

His cultural revolution devoted attention to quite small details. His endorsement of the trilby as the only fitting headgear for modern man, for instance, was designed to wean Turks away from such Islamic hats as the fez, which, being brimless, facilitated bowing to Mecca. This met with resistance from pious Muslims. Some were executed in 1930 for defiantly wearing it. Even today echoes of this old controversy can be heard in disputes about women's wearing of the Islamic headscarf on official occasions. And not all aspects of this culture war were trivial. The Ministry of Religious Affairs not only composes sermons for the mullahs to read each Friday; it also licenses (or, more commonly, refuses to license) the establishment of churches and seminaries for Christians and other religious groups.

Turkey's secularism, in other words, is not the separation of church and state on the American model but the control of religion by the secular state on matters large and small. It reflects a suspicion of religion as a divisive, anti-modern, and disruptive force--which is at least one reason why extreme modern secularists such as Christopher Hitchens regard the Kemalist Republic as a model for the Muslim world. It is, however, a fragile model: Nobody but a great national hero like Ataturk could have gotten away with stripping Islam from the public square.

Even he realized the fragility of his achievement by giving the Turkish armed forces the role of guarding Turkey's secular constitution against a revival of political Islam. They have performed that role well in the years since his death--several times intervening to protect secularism against Islamic political parties and then returning to barracks after the restoration of democracy. Outside the context of Turkish politics, this sounds like an apologia for military dictatorship. But there is little doubt that these earlier military interventions had the support of the political nation and the Kemalist political establishment--and only muted, grudging opposition from "political" Muslims.

That has now changed--and changed largely for good reasons. As Noel Malcolm reported in NR as early as 1995, Turkey developed rapidly in ways that undermined Kemalism and its imposed secularism. The country's rapid economic growth was creating a new entrepreneurial Muslim class. No longer was Turkey divided between Anatolian peasants and a ruling class of "white Turks" in the major cities. Muslim CEOs felt excluded from power by the Kemalist establishment--and their instrument in politics was a new Islamic party, the AKP (Justice and Development party).

Not coincidentally, the AKP's political advance has taken place against the background of a revived Islamic sentiment throughout Turkey. Some of this is rooted in the reluctant acceptance by the Turkish state of the nation's ethnic diversity--including the existence of a Kurdish identity--which has had the incidental effect of reminding all ethnic groups of what identity unites them: Islam. Some is explained by the war in Bosnia, which aroused enormous sympathy and further heightened the general sense of an Islamic identity in Turkey. And some reflects the evolution of democracy from a Kemalist establishment game to a genuinely national activity in which all groups have an interest. In such circumstances the control of Islam by a secular Ministry and the exile from the agora of any expression of Islamic sentiment or loyalty began to seem as unrealistic as it was undemocratic.

These disparate trends found sinister expression in the rise of some Islamist groups close to jihadism. (A Turkish general complained bitterly to me seven years ago of America's lack of interest in Saudi financing of Islamist mosques.) It was not unreasonable for both Turks and Western observers like Hitchens to fear that the AKP--which won the 2002 general elections--might be the vehicle for such forces, a Trojan Horse smuggled into the Kemalist fortress to destroy secularism. But the record argues strongly, if not conclusively, that such fears are groundless.

The AKP is not an Islamist party on the model of Hamas. It is a socially conservative Muslim party not unlike the German Christian Democrats. During its period in power, it has made no moves towards establishing sharia law. Its strong support for entry into the EU is entirely inconsistent with an Islamist move towards sharia. If anything, the AKP has moved in the opposite direction, recently launching a campaign against honor killings. What is happening in Turkey is not a culture war between Western secularism and jihadist Islamism. Rather, the evolution of democracy and the spread of Islamic piety make it essential for Turkey to develop a more tolerant secularism that will permit the public expression of religious commitment.

Why, then, is such a moderate and even inevitable development provoking the constitutional crisis currently gripping Turkey and alarming the West? The answer lies in the fears of the secularists rather than the plots of Islamists. Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, was nominated for the post of Turkish president by his party. Until then the presidency was seen by Kemalists and other secularist Turks as a vital political safeguard against the AKP's political advance everywhere else. Accordingly, the Turkish army dropped heavy hints that they might mount a coup if Gul were elected. Massive "secularist" demonstrations took place in Istanbul (admittedly in a carnival atmosphere rather than an apocalyptic one). When the opposition withdrew from Parliament, depriving the AKP of a quorum for Gul's election, a relieved constitutional court declared any election void. Gul himself then prudently withdrew his candidacy, and new parliamentary elections were announced for July.

So Turkey is settling a potentially dangerous constitutional crisis in a sensible and stable way--by an election. That sensible settlement was helped along by the European Union's warning that a military coup would render the nation ineligible for EU membership. That intervention was timely and also significant. For the more tolerant secularism that Turkey needs might still require protection against both the army and Islamists. Entry into the EU with its well-established rules on religious liberty would fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Turkey's armed forces from the political arena.

It is far from certain, however, that Turkey will be admitted to the EU. Nicolas Sarkozy fears that Turkish entry is a synonym for unlimited Muslim immigration, and he's not the only European who holds that view. Until the EU question is settled, therefore, some other external protection for Turkish democracy and moderate secularism must be found. And since allowing Turkey to drift towards a military coup, and perhaps an anti-Western, nationalist orientation in foreign policy, would be a disaster, the U.S. needs to involve itself in this crisis. But how? And to do what?

In early May in Washington, President Bush and German chancellor Angela

Merkel (the latter acting on behalf of the whole EU) agreed on moves towards a new transatlantic economic community that would embrace free trade and regulatory cooperation, but not free emigration. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. If non-EU countries in Europe were to be admitted to this vast new market and its accompanying institutions, any blow to Turkey resulting from postponed EU membership would be comfortably soothed by its membership in a better club--but a club with similar rules on democracy and secularism.

Jacques Chirac would have vetoed any such proposal on the grounds that the EU is intended to be a rival to the U.S. As America's new best friend in Europe, however, Sarkozy might help to solve the Turkish problem that he is helping to create. After all, if Turkey is an insoluble problem in either a purely Turkish or a purely European context ... change the context.